2017:

“Building Bridges in a Divisive Climate: Diversity in Libraries, Archives, and Museums,” panel discussion program held at the University of Rhode Island Libraries on Thursday November 30, 2017.

Getting Minorities on Board

I recently moderated a panel discussion program titled “Building Bridges in a Divisive Climate: Diversity in Libraries, Archives, and Museums.”1 Participating in organizing this program was interesting experience. During the whole time, I experienced my perspective constantly shifting back and forth as (i) someone who is a woman of color in the US who experiences and deals with small and large daily acts of discrimination, (ii) an organizer/moderator trying to get as many people as possible to attend and participate, and (iii) a mid-career librarian who is trying to contribute to the group efforts to find a way to move the diversity agenda forward in a positive and inclusive way in my own institution.

In the past, I have participated in multiple diversity-themed programs either as a member of the organizing committee or as an attendee and have been excited to see colleagues organize and run such programs. But when asked to write or speak about diversity myself, I always hesitated and declined. This puzzled me for a long time because I couldn’t quite pinpoint where my own resistance was coming from. I am writing about this now because I think it may shed some light on why it is often difficult to get minorities on board with diversity-related efforts.

A common issue that many organizers experience is that often these diversity programs draw many allies who are already interested in working on the issue of diversity, equity, and inclusion but not necessarily a lot of those who the organizers consider to be the target audience, namely, minorities. What may be the reason? Perhaps I can find a clue for the answer to this question from my own resistance regarding speaking or writing about diversity, preferring rather to be in the audience with a certain distance or as an organizer helping with logistics behind the scene.

To be honest, I always harbored a level of suspicion about how much of the sudden interests in diversity is real and how much of it is simply about being on the next hot trend. Trends come and go, but issues lived through many lives of those who belong to various systematically disadvantaged and marginalized groups are not trends. Although I have been always enthusiastic about participating in diversity-focused programs as attendees and was happy to see diversity, equity, and inclusion discussed in articles and talks, I wasn’t ready to sell out my lived experience as part of a hot trend, a potential fad.

To be clear, I am not saying that any of the diversity-related programs or events were asking speakers or authors to be a sell-out. I am only describing how things felt to me and where my own resistance was originating. I have been and am happy to see diversity discussed even as a one-time fad. Better a fad than no discussion at all.

One may argue that that diversity has been actively discussed for quite some time now. A few years, maybe several, or even more. Some of the prominent efforts to increase diversity in librarianship I know, for example, go as far back as 2007 when Oregon State University Libraries sponsored two scholarships to the Code4Lib conference, one for women and the other for minorities, which have continued from then on as the Code4Lib Diversity Scholarship.2 But if one has lived the entire life as a member of a systematically disadvantaged group either as a woman, a person of color, a person of certain sexual orientation, a person of a certain faith, a person with a certain disability, etc., one knows better than expecting some sudden interests in diversity to change the world we live in and most of the people overnight.

I admit I have been watching the diversity discussion gaining more and more traction in librarianship with growing excitement and concern at the same time. For I felt that all of what is being achieved through so many people’s efforts may get wiped out at any moment. The more momentum it accrues, I worried, the more serious backlash it may come to face. For example, it was openly stated that seeking racial/ethnic diversity is superficial and for appearance’s sake and that those who appear to belong to “Team Diversity” do not work as hard as those in “Team Mainstream.” People make this type of statements in order to create and strengthen a negative association between multiple dimensions of diversity that are all non-normative (such as race/ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, immigration status, disability) and unfavorable value judgements (such as inferior intellectual capacity or poor work ethic).3 According to this kind of flawed reasoning, a tech company whose entire staff consists of twenty-something white male programmers with a college degree, may well have achieved a high level of diversity because the staff might have potentially (no matter how unlikely) substantial intellectual and personal differences in their thinking, background, and experience, and therefore their clear homogeneity is no real problem. That’s just a matter of trivial “appearance.” The motivation behind this kind of intentional misdirection is to derail current efforts towards expanding diversity, equity, and inclusion by taking people’s attention away from the real issue of systematic marginalization in our society. Of course, the ultimate goal of all diversity efforts should be not the mere inclusion of minorities but enabling them to have agency as equal as the agency those privileged already possess. But note that objections are being raised against mere inclusion. Anti-diversity sentiment is real, and people will try to rationalize it in any way they can.

Then of course, the other source of my inner resistance to speaking or writing about diversity has been the simple fact that thinking about diversity, equity, and inclusion does not take me to a happy place. It reminds me of many bad experiences accumulated over time that I would rather not revisit. This is why I admire those who have spoken and written about their lived experience as a member of a systematically discriminated and marginalized group. Their contribution is a remarkably selfless one.

I don’t have a clear answer to how this reflection on my own resistance against actively speaking or writing about diversity will help future organizers. But clearly, being asked to join many times had an effect since I finally did accept the invitation to moderate a panel and wrote this article. So, if you are serious about getting more minorities – whether in different religions, genders, disabilities, races, etc. – to speak or write on the issue, then invite them and be ready to do it over and over again even if they decline. Don’t expect that they will trust you at the first invitation. Understand that by accepting such an invitation, minorities do risk far more than non-minorities will ever do. The survey I ran for the registrants of the “Building Bridges in a Divisive Climate: Diversity in Libraries, Archives, and Museums” panel discussion program showed several respondents expressing their concern about the backlash at their workplaces that did or may result from participating in diversity efforts as a serious deterrent.4 If we would like to see more minorities participate in diversity efforts, we must create a safe space for everyone and take steps to deal with potential backlash that may ensue afterwards.5

A Gentle Intro or a Deep Dive?

Another issue that many organizers of diversity-focused events, programs, and initiatives struggle with is two conflicting expectations from their audience. On one hand, there are those who are familiar with diversity, equity, and inclusion issues and want to see how institutions and individuals are going to take their initial efforts to the next level. These people often come from organizations that already implemented certain pro-diversity measures such as search advocates for the hiring process.6 and educational programs that familiarize the staff with the topic of diversity, equity, and inclusion.7 On the other hand, there are still many who are not quite sure what diversity, equity, and inclusion exactly mean in a workplace or in their lives. Those people would continue to benefit from a gentle introduction to things such as privilege, microaggression, and unconscious biases.

The feedback surveys collected after the “Building Bridges in a Divisive Climate: Diversity in Libraries, Archives, and Museums” panel discussion program showed these two different expectations. Some people responded that they deeply appreciated the personal stories shared by the panelists, noting that they did not realize how often minorities are marginalized even in one day’s time. Others, however, said they would be like to hear more about actionable items and strategies that can be implemented to further advance the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion that go beyond personal stories. Balancing these two different demands is a hard act for organizers. However, this is a testament to our collective achievement that more and more people are aware of the importance of continuing efforts to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion in libraries, archives, and museums.

I do think that we need to continue to provide a general introduction to diversity-related issues, exposing people to everyday experience of marginalized groups such as micro-invalidation, impostor syndrome, and basic concepts like white privilege, systematic oppression, colonialism, and intersectionality. One of the comments we received via the feedback survey after our diversity panel discussion program was that the program was most relevant in that it made “having colleagues attend with me to hear what I myself have never told them” possible. General programs and events can be an excellent gateway to more open and less guarded discussion.

At the same time, it seems to be high time for us in libraries, museums, and archives to take a deep dive into different realms of diversity, equity, and inclusion as well. Diversity comes in many dimensions such as age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Many of us feel more strongly about one issue than others. We should create opportunities for ourselves to advocate for specific diversity issues that we care most.

The only thing I would emphasize is that one specific dimension of diversity should not be used as an excuse to neglect others. Exploring socioeconomic inequality issues without addressing how they work combined with the systematic oppression of marginalized groups such as Native Americans, women, or immigrants at the same time can be an example of such a case. All dimensions of diversity are closely knitted with one another, and they do not exist independently. For this reason, a deep dive into different realms of diversity, equity, and inclusion must be accompanied by the strong awareness of their intersectionality.8

Recommendations and Resources for Future Organizers

Organizing a diversity-focused program takes a lot of effort. While planning the “Building Bridges in a Divisive Climate: Diversity in Libraries, Archives, and Museums” panel discussion program at the University of Rhode Island Libraries, I worked closely with my library dean, Karim Boughida, who originally came up with the idea of having a panel discussion program at the University of Rhode Island Libraries, and Renee Neely in the libraries’ diversity initiatives for approximately two months. For panelists, we decided to recruit as many minorities from diverse institutions and backgrounds. We were fortunate to find panelists from a museum, an archive, both a public and an academic library with varying degrees of experience in the field from only a few years to over twenty-five years, ranging from a relatively new archivist to an experienced museum and a library director. Our panel consisted of one-hundred percent people of color. The thoughts and perspectives that those panelists shared were, as a result, remarkably diverse and insightful. For this reason, I recommend spending some time to get the right speakers for your program if your program will have speakers.

Discussion at the “Building Bridges in a Divisive Climate: Diversity in Libraries, Archives, and Museums,” at the University of Rhode Island Libraries

Another thing I would like to share is the questions that I created for the panel discussion. Even though we had a whole hour, I was able to cover only several of them. But since I discussed all these questions in advance with the panelists and they helped me put a final touch on some of those, I think these questions can be useful to future organizers who may want to run a similar program. They can be utilized for a panel discussion, an unconference, or other types of programs. I hope this is helpful and save time for other organizers.

Sample Questions for the Diversity Panel Discussion

Why should libraries, archives, museums pay attention to the issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion?

In what ways do you think the lack of diversity in our profession affects the perception of libraries, museums, and archives in the communities we serve?

Do you have any personal or work-related stories that you would like to share that relate to diversity, equity, and inclusion issues?

How did you get interested in diversity, equity, and inclusion issues?

Suppose you discovered that your library’s, archive’s or museum’s collection includes prejudiced information, controversial objects/ documents, or hate-inducing material. What would you do?

Suppose a group of your library / archive / museum patrons want to use your space to hold a local gathering that involves hate speech. What would you do? What would you be mostly concerned about, and what would the things that you would consider to make a decision on how you will respond?

Do you think libraries, archives, and museums are a neutral place? What do you think neutrality means to a library, an archive, a museum in practice in a divisive climate such as now?

What are some of the areas in libraries, museums, and archives where you see privileges and marginalization function as a barrier to achieving our professional values – equal access and critical thinking? What can we do to remove those barriers?

Could you tell us how colonialist thinking and practice are affecting libraries, museums, and archives either consciously or unconsciously? Since not everyone is familiar with what colonialism is, please begin with first your brief interpretation of what colonialist thinking or practice look like in libraries, museums, and archives first?

What do you think libraries, archives, and museums can do more to improve critical thinking in the community that we serve?

Although libraries, archives, museums have been making efforts to recruit, hire, and retain diverse personnel in recent years, the success rate has been relatively low. For example, in librarianship, it has been reported that often those hired through these efforts experienced backlash at their own institutions, were subject to unrealistic expectations, and met with unsupportive environment, which led to burnout and a low retention rate of talented people. From your perspective – either as a manager hiring people or a relatively new librarian who looked for jobs – what do you think can be done to improve this type of unfortunate situation?

Many in our profession express their hesitation to actively participate in diversity, equity, and inclusion-related discussion and initiatives at their institutions because of the backlash from their own coworkers. What do you think we can do to minimize such backlash?

Some people in our profession express strong negative feelings regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion-related initiatives. How much of this type of anti-diversity sentiment do you think exist in your field? Some worry that this is even growing faster in the current divisive and intolerant climate. What do you think we can do to counter such anti-diversity sentiment?

There are many who are resistant to the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Have you taken any action to promote and advance these values facing such resistance? If so, what was your experience like, and what would be some of the strategies you may recommend to others working with those people?

Many people in our profession want to take our diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives to the next level, beyond offering mere lip service or simply playing a numbers game for statistics purpose. What do you think that next level may be?

Lastly, I felt strongly about ensuring that the terms and concepts often thrown out in diversity/equity/inclusion-related programs and events – such as intersectionality, white privilege, microaggression, patriarchy, colonialism, and so on – are not used to unintentionally alienate those who are unfamiliar with them. These concepts are useful and convenient shortcuts that allow us to communicate a large set of ideas previously discussed and digested, so that we can move our discussion forward more efficiently. They should not make people feel uncomfortable nor generate any hint of superiority or inferiority.

I am sharing the survey questions, the video links, and the glossary in the hope that they may be helpful as a useful tool for future organizers. For example, one may decide to provide a glossary like this before the program or run an unconference that aims at unpacking the meanings of these terms and discussing how they relate to people’s daily lives.10

In Closing: Diversity, Libraries, Technology, and Our Own Biases

Disagreements on social issues are natural. But the divisiveness that we are currently experiencing seems to be particularly intense. This deeply concerns us, educators and professionals working in libraries, archives, and museums. Libraries, archives, and museums are public institutions dedicated to promoting and advancing civic values. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are part of those core civic values that move our society forward. This task, however, has become increasingly challenging as our society moves in a more and more divisive direction.

To make matters even more complicated, libraries, archives, museums in general lack diversity in their staff composition. This homogeneity can impede achieving our own mission. According to the recent report from Ithaka S+R released this August, we do not appear to have gotten very far. Their report “Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity: Members of the Association of Research (ARL) Libraries – Employee Demographics and Director Perspectives,” shows that libraries and library leadership/administration are both markedly white-dominant (71% and 89% white non-Hispanic respectively).11 Also, while librarianship in general are female dominant (61%), the technology field in libraries is starkly male (70%) along with Makerspace (65%), facilities (64%), and security (73%) positions.12 The survey results in the report show that while the majority of library directors say there are barriers to achieving more diversity in their library, they attribute those barriers to external rather than internal factors such as the library’s geographic location and the insufficiently diverse application pool resulting from the library’s location. What is fascinating, however, is that this directly conflicts with the fact that libraries do show little variation in the ratio of white staff based on degree of urbanization. Equally interesting is that the staff in more homogeneous and less diverse (over 71% White Non-Hispanic) libraries think that their libraries are much more equitable than the library community (57% vs 14%) and that library directors (and staff) consider their own library to be more equitable, diverse, and inclusive than the library community with respect to almost every category such as race/ethnicity, gender, LGBTQ, disabilities, veterans, and religion.

While these findings in the Ithaka S+R report are based upon the survey results from ARL libraries, similar staff composition and attitudes can be assumed to apply to libraries in general. There is a great need for both the library administration and the staff to understand their own unconscious and implicit biases, workplace norms, and organizational culture that may well be thwarting their own diversity efforts.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion have certainly been a topic of active discussion in the recent years. Many libraries have established a committee or a task force dedicated to improving diversity. But how are those efforts paying out? Are they going beyond simply paying a lip service? Is it making a real difference to everyday experience of minority library workers?13 Can we improve, and if so where and how? Where do we go from here? Those would be the questions that we will need to examine in order to take our diversity efforts in libraries, archives, and museums to the next level.

Note that this kind of biased assertions often masquerades itself as an objective intellectual pursuit in academia when in reality, it is a direct manifestation of an existing prejudice reflecting the limited and shallow experience of the person posting the question him/herself. A good example of this is found in the remark in 2005 made by Larry Summers, the former Harvard President. He suggested that one reason for relatively few women in top positions in science may be “issues of intrinsic aptitude” rather than widespread indisputable everyday discrimination against women. He resigned after the Harvard faculty of arts and sciences cast a vote of no confidence. See Scott Jaschik, “What Larry Summers Said,” Inside Higher Ed, February 18, 2005, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/02/18/summers2_18. ↩

For this purpose, asking all participants to respect one another’s privacy in advance can be a good policy. In addition to this, we specifically decided not to stream or record our panel discussion program, so that both panelists and attendees can freely share their experience and thoughts. ↩

For the limitations of the mainstream diversity discussion in LIS (library and information science) with the focus on inclusion and cultural competency, see David James Hudson, “On ‘Diversity’ as Anti-Racism in Library and Information Studies: A Critique,” Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies 1, no. 1 (January 31, 2017), https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.24242/jclis.v1i1.6. ↩

At the NDP at Three event organized by IMLS yesterday, Sayeed Choudhury on the “Open Scholarly Communications” panel suggested that libraries think about return on impact in addition to return on investment (ROI). He further elaborated on this point by proposing a possible description of such impact. His description was that when an object or resource created through scholarly communication efforts is being used by someone we don’t know and is interpreted correctly without contacting us (=libraries, archives, museums etc.), that is an impact; to push that further, if someone uses the object or the resource in a way we didn’t anticipate, that’s an impact; if it is integrated into someone’s workflow, that’s also an impact.

This emphasis on impact as a goal for libraries, archives, and museums (or non-profit organizations in general to apply broadly) resonated with me particularly because I gave a talk just a few days ago to a group of librarians at the IOLUG conference about how libraries can and should maximize their social impact in the context of innovation in the way many social entrepreneurs have been already doing for quite some time. In this post, I would like to revisit one point that I made in that talk. It is a specific interpretation of the idea of maximizing social impact as a conscious goal for libraries, archives, and museums (LAM). Hopefully, this will provide a useful heuristic for LAM institutions in mapping out the future efforts.

Considering that ROI is a measure of cost-effectiveness, I believe impact is a much better goal than ROI for LAM institutions. We often think that to collect, organize, provide equitable access to, and preserve information, knowledge, and cultural heritage is the goal of a library, an archive, and a museum. But doing that well doesn’t mean simply doing it cost-effectively. Our efforts no doubt aim at achieving better-collected, better-organized, better-accessed, and better-preserved information, knowledge, and cultural heritage. However, our ultimate end-goal is attained only when such information, knowledge, and cultural heritage is better used by our users. Not simply better accessed, but better used in the sense that the person gets to leverage such information, knowledge, and cultural heritage to succeed in whatever endeavor that s/he was making, whether it be career success, advanced education, personal fulfillment, or private business growth. In my opinion, that’s the true impact that LAM institutions should aim at. If that kind of impact were a destination, cost-effectiveness is simply one mode of transportation, preferred one maybe but not quite comparable to the destination in terms of importance.

But what does “better used” exactly mean? “Integrated into people’s workflow” is a hint; “unanticipated use” is another clue. If you are like me and need to create and design that kind of integrated or unanticipated use at your library, archive, or museum, how will you go about that? This is the same question we ask over and over again. How do you plan and implement innovation? Yes, we will go talk to our users, ask what they would like to see, meet with our stakeholders and find out their interests and concerns are, discuss ourselves what we can do to deliver things that our users want, and go from there to another wonderful project we work hard for. Then after all that, we reach a stage where we stop and wonder where that “greater social impact” went in almost all our projects. And we frantically look for numbers. How many people accessed what we created? How many downloads? What does the satisfaction survey say?

In those moments, how does the “impact” verbiage help us? How does that help us in charting our actual path to creating and maximizing our social impact more than the old-fashioned “ROI” verbiage? At least ROI is quantifiable and measurable. This, I believe, is why we need a more concrete heuristic to translate the lofty “impact” to everyday “actions” we can take. Maybe not quite as specific as to dictate what exactly those actions are at each project level but a bit more specific to enable us to frame the value we are attempting to create and deliver at our LAM institutions beyond cost-effectiveness.

I think the heuristic we need is the conversion of need to demand. What is an untapped need that people are not even aware of in the realm of information, knowledge, and cultural heritage? When we can identify any such need in a specific form and successfully convert that need to a demand, we make an impact. By “demand,” I mean the kind of user experience that people will desire and subsequently fulfill by using that object, resource, tool, service, etc., we create at our library, archive, and museum. (One good example of such desirable UX that comes to my mind is NYPL Photo Booth: https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/08/12/snapshots-nypl.) When we create a demand out of such an untapped need, when the fulfillment of that kind of demand effectively creates, strengthens, and enriches our society in the direction of information, knowledge, evidence-based decisions, and truth being more valued, promoted, and equitably shared, I think we get to maximize our social impact.

In the last “Going Forward” panel where the information discovery was discussed, Loretta Parham pointed out that in the corporate sector, information finds consumers, not the other way. By contrast, we (by which I mean all of us working at LAM institutions) still frame our value in terms of helping and supporting users access and use our material, resources, and physical and digital objects and tools. This is a mistake in my opinion, because it is a self-limiting value proposition for libraries, archives, and museums.

What is the point of us LAM institutions, working so hard to get the public to use their resources and services? The end goal is so that we can maximize our social impact through such use. The rhetoric of “helping and supporting people to access and use our resources” does not adequately convey that. Businesses want their clients to use their goods and services, of course. But their real target is the making of profit out of those uses, aka purchases.

Similarly, but far more importantly, the real goal of libraries, archives and museums is to move the society forward, closer in the direction of knowledge, evidence-based decisions, and truth being more valued, promoted, and equitably shared. One person at a time, yes, but the ultimate goal reaching far beyond individuals. The end goal is maximizing our impact on this side of the public good.

Many libraries today provide 3D printing service. But not all of them can afford to do so for free. While free 3D printing may be ideal, it can jeopardize the sustainability of the service over time. Nevertheless, many libraries tend to worry about charging service fees.

In this post, I will outline how I determined the pricing schema for our library’s new 3D Printing service in the hope that more libraries will consider offering 3D printing service if having to charge the fee is a factor stopping them. But let me begin with libraries’ general aversion to fees.

A 3D printer in action at the Health Sciences and Human Services Library (HS/HSL), Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore

Service Fees Are Not Your Enemy

Charging fees for the library’s service is not something librarians should regard as a taboo. We live in the times in which a library is being asked to create and provide more and more new and innovative services to help users successfully navigate the fast-changing information landscape. A makerspace and 3D printing are certainly one of those new and innovative services. But at many libraries, the operating budget is shrinking rather than increasing. So, the most obvious choice in this situation is to aim for cost-recovery.

It is to be remembered that even when a library aims for cost-recovery, it will be only partial cost-recovery because there is a lot of staff time and expertise that is spent on planning and operating such new services. Libraries should not be afraid to introduce new services requiring service fees because users will still benefit from those services often much more greatly than a commercial equivalent (if any). Think of service fees as your friend. Without them, you won’t be able to introduce and continue to provide a service that your users need. It is a business cost to be expected, and libraries will not make profit out of it (even if they try).

Still bothered? Almost every library charges for regular (paper) printing. Should a library rather not provide printing service because it cannot be offered for free? Library users certainly wouldn’t want that.

Determining Your Service Fees

What do you need in order to create a pricing scheme for your library’s 3D printing service?

(a) First, you need to list all cost-incurring factors. Those include (i) the equipment cost and wear and tear, (ii) electricity, (iii) staff time & expertise for support and maintenance, and (iv) any consumables such as 3d print filament, painter’s tape. Remember that your new 3D printer will not last forever and will need to be replaced by a new one in 3-5 years.

Also, some of these cost-incurring factors such as staff time and expertise for support is fixed per 3D print job. On the other hand, another cost-incurring factor, 3D print filament, for example, is a cost factor that increases in proportion to the size/density of a 3d model that is printed. That is, the larger and denser a 3d print model is, the more filament will be used incurring more cost.

(b) Second, make sure that your pricing scheme is readily understood by users. Does it quickly give users a rough idea of the cost before their 3D print job begins? An obscure pricing scheme can confuse users and may deter them from trying out a new service. That would be bad user experience.

Also in 3D printing, consider if you will also charge for a failed print. Perhaps you do. Perhaps you don’t. Maybe you want to charge a fee that is lower than a successful print. Whichever one you decide on, have that covered since failed prints will certainly happen.

(c) Lastly, the pricing scheme should be easily handled by the library staff. The more library staff will be involved in the entire process of a library patron using the 3D printing service from the beginning to the end, the more important this becomes. If the pricing scheme is difficult for the staff to work with when they need charge for and process each 3D print job, the new 3D printing service will increase their workload significantly.

Which staff will be responsible for which step of the new service? What would be the exact tasks that the staff will need to do? For example, it may be that several staff at the circulation desk need to learn and handle new tasks involving the 3D printing service, such as labeling and putting away completed 3D models, processing the payment transaction, delivering the model, and marking the job status for the paid 3D print job as ‘completed’ in the 3D Printing Staff Admin Portal if there is such a system in place. Below is the screenshot of the HS/HSL 3D Printing Staff Admin Portal developed in-house by the library IT team.

Examples – 3D Printing Service Fees

It’s always helpful to see how other libraries are doing when you need to determine your own pricing scheme. Here are some examples that shows ten libraries’ 3D printing pricing scheme changed over the recent three years.

Types of 3D Printing Service Fees

From the examples above, you will notice that many 3d printing service fee schemes are based upon the weight of a 3D-print model. This is because these libraries are trying recover the cost of the 3d filament, and the amount of filament used is most accurately reflected in the weight of the resulting 3D-printed model.

However, there are a few problems with the weight-based 3D printing pricing scheme. First, it is not readily calculable by a user before the print job, because to do so, the user will have to weigh a model that s/he won’t have until it is 3D-printed. Also, once 3D-printed, the staff will have to weigh each model and calculate the cost. This is time-consuming and not very efficient.

For this reason, my library considered an alternative pricing scheme based on the size of a 3D model. The idea was that we will have roughly three different sizes of an empty box – small, medium, and large – with three different prices assigned. Whichever box into which a user’s 3d printed object fits will determine how much the user will pay for her/his 3D-printed model. This seemed like a great idea because it is easy to determine how much a model will cost to 3d-print to both users and the library staff in comparison to the weight-based pricing scheme.

Unfortunately, this size-based pricing scheme has a few significant flaws. A smaller model may use more filament than a larger model if it is denser (meaning the higher infill ratio). Second, depending on the shape of a model, a model that fits in a large box may use much less filament than the one that fits in a small box. Think about a large tree model with think branches. Then compare that with a 100% filled compact baseball model that fits into a smaller box than the tree model does. Thirdly, the resolution that determines a layer height may change the amount of filament used even if what is 3D-printed is a same model.

Charging Based upon the 3D Printing Time

So we couldn’t go with the size-based pricing scheme. But we did not like the problems of the weight-based pricing scheme, either. As an alternative, we decided to go with the time-based pricing scheme because printing time is proportionate to how much filament is used, but it does not require that the staff weigh the model each time. A 3D-printing software gives an estimate of the printing time, and most 3D printers also display actual printing time for each model printed.

First, we wanted to confirm the hypothesis that 3D printing time and the weight of the resulting model are proportionate to each other. I tested this by translating the weight-based cost to the time-based cost based upon the estimated printing time and the estimated weight of several cube models. Here is the result I got using the Makerbot Replicator 2X.

9.10 gm/36 min= 0.25 gm per min.

17.48 gm/67 min= 0.26 gm per min.

30.80 gm/117 min= 0.26 gm per min.

50.75 gm/186 min=0.27 gm per min.

87.53 gm/316 min= 0.28 gm per min.

194.18 gm/674 min= 0.29 gm per min.

There is some variance, but the hypothesis holds up. Based upon this, now let’s calculate the 3d printing cost by time.

3D plastic filament is $48 for ABS/PLA and $65 for the dissolvable per 0.90 kg (=2.00 lb) from Makerbot. That means that filament cost is $0.05 per gram for ABS/PLA and $0.07 per gram for the dissolvable. So, 3D filament cost is 6 cents per gram on average.

Finalizing the Service Fee for 3D Printing

For an hour of 3D printing time, the amount of filament used would be 15.6 gm (=0.26 x 60 min). This gives us the filament cost of 94 cents per hour of 3D printing (=15.6 gm x 6 cents). So, for the cost-recovery of filament only, I get roughly $1 per hour of 3D printing time.

Earlier, I mentioned that filament is only one of the cost-incurring factors for the 3D printing service. It’s time to bring in those other factors, such as hardware wear/tear, staff time, electricity, maintenance, etc., plus “no-charge-for-failed-print-policy,” which was adopted at our library. Those other factors will add an additional amount per 3D print job. And at my library, this came out to be about $2. (I will not go into details about how these have been determined because those will differ at each library.) So, the final service fee for our new 3D printing service was set to be $3 up to 1 hour of 3D printing + $1 per additional hour of 3D printing. The $3 is broken down to $1 per hour of 3D printing that accounts for the filament cost and $2 fixed cost for every 3D print job.

To help our users to quickly get an idea of how much their 3D print job will cost, we have added a feature to the HS/HSL 3D Print Job Submission Form online. This feature automatically calculates and displays the final cost based upon the printing time estimate that a user enters.

Don’t Be Afraid of Service Fees

I would like to emphasize that libraries should not be afraid to set service fees for new services. As long as they are easy to understand and the staff can explain the reasons behind those service fees, they should not be a deterrent to a library trying to introduce and provide a new innovative service.

There is a clear benefit in running through all cost-incurring factors and communicating how the final pricing scheme was determined (including the verification of the hypothesis that 3D printing time and the weight of the resulting model are proportionate to each other) to all library staff who will be involved in the new 3D printing service. If any library user inquire about or challenges the service fee, the staff will be able to provide a reasonable explanation on the spot.

I implemented this pricing scheme at the same time as the launch of my library’s makerspace (the HS/HSL Innovation Space at the University of Maryland, Baltimore – http://www.hshsl.umaryland.edu/services/ispace/) back in April 2015. We have been providing 3D printing service and charging for it for more than two years. I am happy to report that during that entire duration, we have not received any complaint about the service fee. No library user expected our new 3D printing service to be free, and all comments that we received regarding the service fee were positive. Many expressed a surprise at how cheap our 3D printing service is and thanked us for it.

To summarize, libraries should be willing to explore and offer new innovating services even when they require charging service fees. And if you do so, make sure that the resulting pricing scheme for the new service is (a) sustainable and accountable, (b) readily graspable by users, and (c) easily handled by the library staff who will handle the payment transaction. Good luck and happy 3D printing at your library!

An example model with the 3D printing cost and the filament info displayed at the HS/HSL, University of Maryland, Baltimore